Understanding Hybridity,Representational Networks,and Resilience Enactment Through Social Media Communication

Abstract

Organizations pursuing multiple, often competing goals typically struggle to build the resilience needed to sustain such hybridity. Drawing on the hybrid organizing literature, this study examines how organizations’ symbolic emphasis on dual social-business logics (i.e., high logic centrality) in their social media communication predicts their representational ties on social media and the subsequent communication of resilience enactment. Employing a multi-sourced research design, this study analyzed data from an online survey of 260 social enterprises (SEs) in Taiwan, alongside 3 years of their Facebook data during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings showed that the display of high logic centrality on social media predicted the communication of resilience enactment both directly and indirectly through greater engagement in representational ties with other organizations. Moreover, the strength of the indirect relationship varied based on SEs’ perceived logic centrality in their overall operations. The researchers drew theoretical and methodological implications from the key findings.

Keywords

symbolic hybridity hybrid organizing institutional logic communication of resilience enactment social media social enterprise COVID-19 pandemic machine learning

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